You Tube had to remove a video posted by Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis that had misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic health crisis. The video was a recording was of a March 18, 2021 roundtable discussion on public health featuring a panel of physicians who appeared to be hand-picked because their views aligned with DeSantis’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Among them was Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist with no experience as an epidemiologist or public health expert, who was a pandemic adviser to former President Donald Trump. He had to resign from the administration. His tenure had been mired in controversy.
Also on the panel were Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, of Stanford Medical School — all of whom have been critical of lockdowns and certain other measures amid the pandemic. It should noted that during the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, doctors and nurses were happy to murder patients for the fatherland.
DeSantis asked panelists whether children needed to wear face masks in school. They contradicted the findings of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). YouTube pointed to those comments as example of content that violated its standards about “COVID-19 medical misinformation.” (CDC) recommends that children ages 2 and older wear a mask when in public and when around people they don’t live with.
Florida leads the country in the number of COVID variants. Florida has double the number of variants as the number two state Michigan. The state’s openness and tourism could be contributing factors on top of the Governor’s arrogant stupidity. A report this week from the National Institutes of Health called the B.1.1.7 variant “considerably more contagious than the original virus” and said “emerging evidence indicates that infection with this B.1.1.7 variant also comes with an increased risk of severe illness and death.” Florida also has the P.1 variant first detected in Brazil and the B.1.351 variant initially identified in South Africa. Research has now shown that the South African variant can infect people who have had the Pfizer vaccine.
People continue to arrive in Central Florida’s theme parks and other statewide tourist destinations from all over the country, which means that if the variant emerges elsewhere, they are more likely to bring it into the state. Also if people become infected while letting their guard down in Florida they can then bring the virus back to their home state. Orange County Florida, health officials provide twice-per-week updates on the county’s number of variant cases, which continues to grow. On April 1, 2021 the health officials reported 105 variant cases, up from 80 cases in the county on March 29, 2021. Cases are rising in younger adults. It should be noted that variants are very under reported.
Thanks to the Governor, Florida remains the nations top breading ground for the spread of the virus and its variants. A total of 2,118,713 Florida residents have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began. On April 9, 2021, 6,906 new COVID-19 cases were reported with 50 deaths. As of April 10, 2021 there have been 34,676 deaths in the state related to the virus.